My numberless blessings

[flemmings]

There's a bridge in Angst-Morfrog Ankh-Morpork called Pon's and another called Contract. There's also a robin's nest with three eggs in it in a low crook of the front yard tree, handy for cats and raccoons, which may yet survive. (My s-i-l says the tree's a birch, the city department that planted it said it was an ironwood. This doesn't mean my s-i-l is wrong, of course.) The plum blossoms are all out in the back yard and the cherry blossoms are as ever neck and neck with the leaves to see which will come out first. Thus my small happinesses for the day.

Half the loose-ended depression of the the last fortnight may be due to reading yellowed books from the shelf dating back twenty years or more- the ones bought with such high hopes that never got anywhere and that now reek of the ancient desiccated past. Breathing their mummy dust leads to exquisite gloom. 'Why don't I have anything from *ten* years ago?' I asked myself. The answer is that I do- yellowed manga from the shelf bought with high hopes and now reeking of the semi-recent decomposing past. At least these have pretty pictures, some of them: the ones I'm reading now in order to be done with them. They're all early works by Yuki Kaori, a woman I have a chronic love-hate affair with. Never too pronounced: she's a contracted bondservant of HanatoYume's, and slaves of the Japanese publishing system must be pitied, au fond. But still.

I think I was in Japan when the Goth movement started; it's not something I'd have noticed even if I'd been here, no doubt. (Last thing I remember noticing was punk, and I suppose goth is an improvement on that, as being prettier at least.) But did anyone at the time mention that gothiness can only be carried off by- is frankly only excusable in- extremely young people? Once you're legal to smoke drink or drive it's time to pack it in, because dear god the thing is of a silliness and vulgarity equalled only by satanism. Erm- which it resembles, I suppose. It shocked me a little to come home and find there were twenty-somethings who not only read Angel Sanctuary but took it seriously as a source on angelic orders and kabbalah and whatnot. Mind, they took CLAMP seriously too, which struck me as a wilful misunderstanding of the thing in the context of its own culture.

But it's not a one way street. Allow me to foam at the mouth a bit here.

Because here is me reading Zankoku na Douwa-tachi and here on the opening pages is a fairy tale about a... fallen angel who falls in love with a human maiden who... is beguiled by music into a fairy ring where she is... fated to dance forever with the 'fairy of the air' Ariel... so the angel shoots her with an arrow to free her into death.

No, no, and no. Separate and mutually exclusive mythic, folklore, and literary traditions. Separate. Mutually exclusive. Fallen angels and the daughters of men is Hebrew. Fairy rings is British. (The 'mortals dancing forever' thing feels like it comes from Anderson, Hans Christian, because while it may be a fairy-like thing to do to a mortal, in Clarkeian recension, it's not anything I can recall traditional fairies actually *doing*.) Ariel, once Hebrew, is now a nature spirit belonging to Shakespeare's Tempest, and that one's simply not negotiable. Angels, even fallen ones, do not have bows and do not shoot people; if they do they're in fact Eros/ Cupid and not angels at all. That's how it works in English lit. Shakespeare could take a Hebrew angel and rework him into a pseudo-Italianate pastoral myth. Very few people are Shakespeare, and Yuki Kaori isn't one of them.

Thank you, I feel better.

Also on the happy list- Everybody Knows, one of those songs mikeneko foisted on me in an attempt to impede my recovery. Leonard Cohen is indeed Old Reliable, and a nonpareil with it. I knew someone once with perfect pitch who couldn't listen to him sing; it hurt her too much. For once I'm glad to have no ear at all, because I think no one else can sing Cohen but Cohen. Everyone else is too smooth by comparison.

Comments

[rasetsunyo.livejournal.com]

a... fallen angel who falls in love with a human maiden who... is beguiled by music into a fairy ring where she is... fated to dance forever with the 'fairy of the air' Ariel... so the angel shoots her with an arrow to free her into death.

Is that what it was? I couldn't make out the names transliterated into Chinese; and now I'm glad. >__>

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

Just as well. As far as I can figure, the girl's name is Cyril- unless it's meant to be the (totally mid-20th century) Cheryl.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

Things I learnt from Yuki Kaori, bless her cracktastically creepy creations (specifically Godchild):

1)Victorian England was a most interesting place to be, especially in Japanese
2)The Japanese term for "pituitary gland", not that any most of my patients know what it is in English, Mandarin, Malay or Hokkien before explanation, and sometimes not even after that.
3)Following on from 2), why prescribe expensive growth hormone injections when one can just do a brain transplant? XD

OTOH Angel Sanctuary left me bored and confused, at least the early volumes.

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

The early volumes of Angel Sanctuary were the ones that made sense, had a plot, and were going somewhere. The later ones... oh well, Resurrected Dead Character Syndrome. Not once but twice, and IIRC with the same character. Not quite the inspired crack of Count Cain ever.

[feliciter.livejournal.com]

Resurrected Dead Character Syndrome. Not once but twice, and IIRC with the same character.

Er...right-O. Mayhap it was all for the best that I stopped reading more or less where the OVA ended (which IIRC deviated considerably, to say the least, from the source).

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

In fact she may have done it three times with the same character. The plot, you understand, gets a little cloudy in my mind.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

Separate. Mutually exclusive.

Not to the Japanese, no. Nothing is sacred to them [you once said about the same thing, remember?]. One of these days, a 3K and Meiji Restoration crossover. *snorts*

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

I know, I know. 'It sounds interesting' is as respectable a creative principle there as 'it looks pretty.' The conjunction of disparate and incomaptible elements is their forte. Just, somehow, I feel there's a difference between ignoring the incompatibility and not knowing it exists in the first place. I agree, western narrative traditions is an awfully recherche thing to suddenly be bothered by. I pass by anachronistic names, conflations of Catholic and Protestant practices, and western warriors offing themselves to follow their lord in death with an indulgent smile, but put angels and fairies into the same story and I yell. -_-

3K and Meiji no problem. I have the Four Guardian Beasts/ Edo chambara/ space opera manga on my shelf, and wish there was a second volume.

[mauvecloud.livejournal.com]

From personal experience, angels and fairies are easily conflated in minds brought up hereabouts. But yea, now that I know more about western religious history and culchure thingie, I can understand your angst. It's a bit like my dialect wank thing, but certainly more significant ^^

[flemmings.livejournal.com]

angels and fairies are easily conflated in minds brought up hereabouts

They both have wings, after all. I can see how it would happen. Buddhist bodhisattvas and Buddhist angels, is there a difference?

It's a bit like my dialect wank thing, but certainly more significant ^^

Oh nonononono. Conflation of imaginary beings by those outside the culture is natural; conflation of a culture's literary traditions even more likely; but conflation of dialects that have only 40% mutual comprehensibility is serious. 'Words are all we have' and they matter.